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Gary Mekikian
File:Gary Mekikian's WSJ Stipple Drawing.gif
The Wall Street Journal's drawing of Gary Mekikian published in August of 2000 in an article titled, "Got a Question. You Might Ask answerFriend"
Born
Garo Mekikian

Yerevan, Armenia
NationalityAmerican
Alma materStanford University
University of Southern California
Occupation(s)CEO of M&M Media, Inc.
Years active1993 — present
Known forTechnology and software entrepreneurship
Board member of
Websitetrebel.io, la2dc.org

Gary Mekikian is an American entrepreneur and investor who is the co-founder and CEO of M&M Media Inc., a Los Angeles-based music technology company. Prior to M&M Media, Mekikian also co-founded International Integration, Inc. also known as i-Cube; answerfriend, Inc., which became Inquira; and GATeIC, Inc.

In addition to business ventures, Mekikian has been a member of Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels, nonprofit organizations that offer consultation and seed capital to startup businesses from successful entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and business experts. Mekikian is a co-organizer of la2dc.org, a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization whose mission is to raise awareness toward modern day genocides and to eliminate genocide as a war tactic.

Mekikian has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and an MS from Stanford University, and holds patents in media technologies[2] and medical devices.[3] Mekikian is a member of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business MSx Alumni Advisory Board.[4] He collaborates with Stanford University professors Dr. William Barnett[5] and Dr. John Roberts[6] to write and teach case studies on entrepreneurship, information technology, semiconductor industry, and the mobile internet.

Early life

Mekikian is a great grandson of survivors of the first genocide of the 20th century - the Armenian Genocide. Mekikian's great-grandparents were ethnic Christian Armenians who had lived in Adana, Ottoman Empire, for several generations. In 1909, a few years prior to the commencement of the Armenian Genocide that wiped out 75% percent of the Armenians (1.5 million people) from their ancestral lands, Mekikian's great-grandparents narrowly escaped the Adana Massacre of 1909, when Christian Armenians were targeted for mass killings. After settling in Beirut, Lebanon, and Damascus, Syria, and building successful businesses, in 1947, Mekikian's grandparents answered the call of Soviet Armenians to move to their homeland, and settled in Yerevan, not realizing that the country was under the control of the Soviet Union's totalitarian regime. In 1979, Mekikian and his parents succeeded in escaping the Soviet Union and arrived in Los Angeles as political refugees. After attending Hollywood High School for two years, Mekikian earned an electrical engineering degree from University of Southern California and started his career as an engineer and a technology entrepreneur.

Career

Early ventures

After graduating with an MS from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in electrical engineering from University of Southern California, Mekikian founded multiple technology and software companies, including i-Cube and Inquira, and GATeIC. In March of 2016, M&M Media released Trebel Music, a free licensed-music download and player mobile app.

In 1993, after working a number of years at Hewlett-Packard Company as a sales engineer, Mekikian co-founded the technology company International Integration Inc., also known as i-Cube, which grew to employ over 400 engineers and consultants, and went public in 1998. i-Cube was acquired by Razorfish, Inc. in 1999 for $677 million in a stock deal[7], which grew to $1.7B in value by the time the deal closed - its largest deal to date.

After the sale of i-Cube, Mekikian joined forces with Dr. Deniz Yuret, a leading researcher in Natural Language Processing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sundar Subramaniam, a co-founder of i-Cube, to found answerFriend, Inc. The company developed and commercialized web based question-answering technologies, akin to modern day Siri of Apple, and Watson of IBM. After introducing its flagship product, answerFriend was featured in The Wall Street Journal article, "Got a Question? You Might Ask answerFriend"[8], and CNN Money's "The Innovators".[9] In 2002, answerFriend merged with another natural language processing technology company, Electric Knowledge, to form InQuira. In 2011, Oracle Corporation acquired Inquira[10] to add the company's advanced knowledge management and self-service solutions to Oracle's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

In 2006, Mekikian co-founded GATeIC, a semiconductor IP company, to develop mathematical algorithms and gate-level implementations for digital signal processing IC's commonly used in wireless base stations and other digital signal processing equipment. The company's proprietary techniques produced IC designs that consumed significantly less power than comparable IC's in the market. Company's Numerically Controlled Oscillator (NCO) and Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) designs were among the most efficient in the industry, and were licensed by large semiconductor manufacturers like Maxim Integrated and Analog Devices.

M&M Media / Trebel Music

In 2014, two years after being awarded a patent on a new method of delivering and monetizing digital media on mobile and desktop devices,[11] Mekikian teamed up with his daughters Grace Mekikian and Juliette Mekikian, his classmates from Stanford Business School, Adrian Sada Cueva and Ernesto Vargas, and colleagues Oscar De La Garza and Rodrigo Vargas, to co-founded M&M Media, Inc. a digital music distribution company, the maker of iOS and Android based Trebel Music app[12]. The company's mission is to enable 2B+ young people everywhere to download and enjoy the music and other media they love in a safe and legal environment, and deliver fair compensation to the artist community. The long term goal of the company is to eliminate the forces that drive digital media piracy in all its forms. Trebel Music trebel.io combines mobile technology, digital advertising, social music, and social payment technologies to bring on-demand music to the masses.

Bibliography

  • William Barnett and Gary Mekikian, (2013) Mercado Libre, Leadership and Managing People Stanford Graduate School of Business[13]
  • Gary Mekikian and John Roberts, (2009) Note on IT Services Industry, Economics Stanford Graduate School of Business[14]
  • Gary Mekikian and John Roberts, (2009) Tata Consultancy Services, Globalization of IT Services, Economics[15]
  • William Barnett and Gary Mekikian, (2008) Creating Qualcomm, Organizational Behavior, Entrepreneurship Stanford Graduate School of Business[16]

References

  1. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/msx/alumni-community/msx-alumni-board
  2. ^ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070219949A1/en?q=electronic+media&q=download
  3. ^ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080033415A1/en?inventor=Gary+Mekikian
  4. ^ http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/msx/alumni-community/msx-alumni-board
  5. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/william-barnett
  6. ^ http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/roberts/
  7. ^ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB934287838620308632
  8. ^ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB967064431797169202
  9. ^ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2001/05/01/302520/
  10. ^ http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/08/04/oracle-rolls-to-37-with-push-from-inquira/#3291b622447d
  11. ^ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070219949A1/en?q=electronic+media&q=download
  12. ^ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trebel-music-free-music-downloader/id912390687?mt=8
  13. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/mercado-libre
  14. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/note-it-services-industry
  15. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/tata-consultancy-services-globalization-it-services
  16. ^ https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/creating-qualcomm

WSJ – http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB934287838620308632 CNN - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2001/05/01/302520/ MyHeritage - https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10182/biographical-summaries-of-notable-people?itemId=2034987&action=showRecord PR Newswire - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/improved-askbea-helps-bea-customers-find-right-answers-quickly-71028092.html Accenture - https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/electronics-high-tech/accenture-and-answerfriend-unveil-alliance-to-helpcompanies-apply-powerful-natural-language-software-to-significantly-improvecustomer-experience.htm GSB Stanford - https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/alumni/contact/alumni-association/about-alumni/gary-mekikian KM World - http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News-Analysis/KM-and-CRM-Is-the-line-blurring-89096.aspx - Inquira/AnswerFriend source. Google Patents - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070219949A1/en?q=electronic+media&q=download Google Patents - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080033415A1/en?inventor=Gary+Mekikian Google Patents - https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2001088662A2/en?inventor=Gary+Mekikian Stanford Graduate School of Business Case, Mercado Libre - https://hbr.org/product/mercadolibre/IB105-PDF-ENG, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/mercado-libre Stanford Graduate School of Business Case, Note on the IT Services Industry - https://hbr.org/product/note-on-the-it-services-industry/IB80-PDF-ENG, Stanford Graduate School of Business Case, Tata Consultancy Services: Globalization of IT Services - https://hbr.org/product/tata-consultancy-services-globalization-of-it-services/IB79-PDF-ENG, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/tata-consultancy-services-globalization-it-services

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